August 24, 2005

Why Israel Has to Leave Now or Later

Pat Robertson proves himself a foreign policy dumbass twice in one week. First he pops off about assassinating Hugo Chavez. Now he rails against Israelis for doing what must, at some point, be done.

Pat Robertson, one of the leading television evangelists in the US, has sharply criticized the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and said God will judge those who leave parts of the land of Israel.

Speaking on his daily TV show aired on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Robertson said "the almighty God said he was going to judge the nation which has parted from his land and that he was going to bring judgment upon that nation."

Robertson's comments on the Gaza withdrawal were quoted on the Christian Coalition of America Web site.

Robertson has been a long supporter of the settlement movement and a strong opponent of the disengagement plan. As many other evangelical leaders in the US, Robertson believes that the historic land of Israel should be under Jewish rule.

Israel has four options.

1) Rule the West Bank and Gaza forever while denying Palestinians citizenship and equal rights. Basically, this is the South African apartheid model. The fact that Israel acquired those lands in self-defense in 1967 doesn't change that.
2) Grant citizenship and equal rights to Palestinians. This would make Jews an ethnic minority in Israel only a few years from now. They'll never do it.
3) Forcibly relocate (in other words, ethnically cleanse) Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza.
4) Withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza.

A debate over when Israel should withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza is an argument worth having. Perhaps it’s best that Sharon is pulling out of Gaza now. Maybe it would be better if he waited. We won’t really know for certain until we can look back in hindsight and see what happens next.

But if “Israel should be under Jewish rule” forever, as Pat Robertson claims, that means Israel has to choose one of the first three options. None are even remotely viable. Jewish morality and experience rightly forbids options one and three. Hardly anyone on either the Israeli or the Palestinian side has any desire to see option two implemented. That leaves only option four. The West Bank and Gaza will not, cannot, remain under Jewish rule. Israelis leave now or later because they have no other choice.

Posted by Michael J. Totten at August 24, 2005 02:48 PM

Comments

This latest does have the fringe (irony intended) benefit of showing the idiots that Robertson isn't telling the White House what to do. Not that they will let facts get in their way, of course.

Michael -- you are incorrect about Option 2. The unitary state with Jews being granted Dhimmi status is the preferred option of the Palestinian factions and the Palestinian people. This accounts for the rejectionism and the lack of any support for the Michael Collins solution.

However, Sharon seems to recognize this and I would not doubt that there are plans in place once the inevitable terrorist atrocity by Hamasastan in Gaza takes place, for some mutual ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, with population transfers on both sides and a defacto two state solution with Israel keeping a substantial portion of the West Bank.

Probably the best Israel can hope for is withdrawal as much as possible from Palestinian areas and walls, punitive responses to various attacks. I don't see peace breaking out for generations (despite most Israelis wanting some sort of settlement desperately).

Robertson isn't getting any real support within the evangelical community for his absurd assasination talk, and even less from the administration. Israel will eventually leave the West Bank but not if a armed Hamas is allowed to operate at will within the currrent boundries of Palestine. If the P.L.O. can't manage to disarm them Israel is not going to leave. They are well armed and they do not hide their intention to destroy Israel. When they state they want their land back they want all of it,pre 48 Israel included. If the P.L.O. makes a serious effort Israel will make a deal. If they don't, they won't.

Dennis Ross has it right: let's see what kind of state they build in Gaza. Anything halfway decent will inspire the Israeli electorate to give up the west Bank. If not, not.
Not all the West Bank either; the parts contiguous to Israel (behind the security fence) will be retained & a land swap will even up the acreage. Inotherwords, the same deal that fell apart because of the intifadeh.
So can Hamas govern? I don't mean impose shar'ia, but actually g o v e r n. When the residents of Ward 12 ask when there'll be hot water, will they just be told "In Allah's good time; meanwhile let's all stone this adulteress?"
If that's all Hamas is going to tell them, then it'll be a long road.

How can Israel withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, and not withdraw from the settlements? The settlements are largely what keeps the IDF pinned down in those places (also, obviously, administering road blocks and other anti-terror security measures). If anything, one could argue to remove the settlements, which serve no security function but are only ideological, and keep the army to maintain quiet until the Palestinians can finally do the job themselves.

Posted by: MarkC at August 24, 2005 09:12 PM

Yep, putting Robertson in charge of handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be disasterous. Almost as disasterous as pulling all of our troops out of Iraq by the end of 2006, as Russ Feingold (the new Howard Dean, mark my words because I said it first) is now suggesting.

It's a good thing neither one of these guys' are at all popular with broad swaths of the American electorate. Oh...Wait. Crap.

Perhaps one should ponder the deeper purpose behind the support of evangelical christians for jewish control over all of historical israel.
Its not, of course, for the benefit of the jewish people, but rather for the biblical prophecy of what comes after....
Hence, Robertson's agenda..

Posted by: at August 24, 2005 09:50 PM

Israel is smart doing this essentially unilaterally. They should withdraw behind the wall and then let the Palestinians do their thing. Negotiations are too difficult.

p.s. anyone know how much aid the PA has received so far?

p.s.s. Would agreee with Aazim Omar's fantasy sentiments in the sense that the state of Israel was poorly planned by the UN.

Posted by: Aaron at August 24, 2005 11:05 PM

Michael -- you are incorrect about Option 2. The unitary state with Jews being granted Dhimmi status .is the preferred option of the Palestinian factions and the Palestinian people.
*************************************************
You cannot be serious. That is not the preffered option the preferred option is to slaughter the Jews wholesale and drive the survivors into the Sea. You are correct about them preferring the One State option, but I doubt the rest of it.

The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS)-Palestine
http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/hamas.htm

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

Now somehow I find it hard to believe the word
obliterate translates into "with Jews being granted Dhimmi status"

The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind

8

stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.

If historic Palestine were returned to the Palestinians, the Jews could be repatriated to the Christian and Muslim countries they originally came from. Only fair after 50 years of brutal oppression.

Plus, most Jews are secular and have prospered wherever they have lived.

Posted by Aazim Omar at August 24, 2005 06:03 PM
*************************************************
Where they would probably thrive in the Christian lands and be butchered in the Muslim lands that would settle the problem wouldn't it?

If historic Palestine were returned to the Palestinians, the Jews could be repatriated to the Christian and Muslim countries they originally came from. Only fair after 50 years of brutal oppression.

Plus, most Jews are secular and have prospered wherever they have lived.

Posted by Aazim Omar at August 24, 2005 06:03 PM
*************************************************
Where they would probably thrive in the Christian lands and be butchered in the Muslim lands that would settle the problem wouldn't it?

I agree with your assessment of the situation, but with a single caveat: there are certain areas of the West Bank which are of immense religious significance to the Jewish people, Hebron is probably the most prominent, in which Jews should be permitted to live under whatever regime eventually rules the West Bank.

Grant -- I suspect the new Howard Dean or Deans, calling for withdrawal in 2006, will be REPUBLICANS. Hegel, probably, and a few others. And they won't be saying anything politically risky, either. The war is going that badly, the President's defense of the need to continue to stay is that unconvincing, and both this is all quite likely to continue.

Regarding Pat Robertson, I recall countless arguments last year with Republicans about the tremendous importance and relevance to national security of the fact that Jimmy Carter invited Michael Moore to sit next to him one evening at the convention. Robertson is much, much more influential with the current White House than a Moore would have been in a Kerry Administration. For instance, through his American Center for Law and Justice legal think tank, Robertson was consulted by the White House (along with Falwell) on the Roberts nomination.

Incorporating some settlement blocs is doubtlessly in the cards. That shouldn't be a problem as long as there is a fair land swap. Camp David 2000 gave Palestinians 1 sq. mile in Israel for every NINE sq. miles of settlement bloc annexations. Taba supposedly was a fairer 3:1 ration. Why can't there be a win/win in which some Israeli Arab settlement blocs are incorporated into the new state as an exchange?

Of course, as Benny Morris points out, Gaza was never, in fact, part of the ancient Israeli kingdoms. (Ironically, where Jews primarily lived is in what is now known as the West Bank, and the coastal strip that is now considered Israel proper was largely in the hands of Gentiles.) Of course, none of this matters if you believe you have The Word Of God.

"That leaves only option four. The West Bank and Gaza will not, cannot, remain under Jewish rule. Israelis leave now or later because they have no other choice."

Since option 4 was already tried and failed (Oslo, rings a bell ?), most of the Israelis think about option 5 :
- Withdraw from PARTS of the West Bank and ALL of Gaza.
- Keeping the largest jewish cities (Emmanuel, Ariel, ...) inside the israelis borders.
- Giving up the largest arab cities in the Galil (Um-el-fahem, Nazareth-Tahtit, ...) and in the Negev to the palestinian state.

Curious about a few things: Why does it not matter that Israel acquired the West Bank as a result of a war (actually one of four initiated by Arabs)? I would be dollars to dimes that had the Arabs there purely protested by peaceful means, indicating a strong desire to live in peace with Jews, that there would be no problem today. But since Moslems do not want to live in peace with anyone else, the Israelis are stuck with the WB.
Another alterantive: populate it with settlers to become a majority in parts of it. Annex those parts and give the trucated rest to whomever.
As for the notion of acquiring land by conquest, I'm assuming you don't plan, Michael, on giving back your home to the native Americans? Or perhaps returning California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to Mexico? And if you are looking for evil to combat, what bout Tibet, a large non-Chinese country military annexed by China where the native culture is being choked off. You know, if you want a cause or something.

If the Arabs really want to live in peace with Jews, then let them demonstrate that. Perhaps after a decade or so of truely peaceful existence it would be time to discuss land.

As for the notion of acquiring land by conquest, I'm assuming you don't plan, Michael, on giving back your home to the native Americans?

Native americans get to vote in elections.

It's a simple point - if someone is born within your borders, never leaves them, never does anything to disqualify himself from voting, but can't get onto the electoral roll, then something is wrong. If the number of people in that category is significant, then the country in question is not a democracy.

While today, we publically regard population transfer as immoral, the fact is that it was not only considered the right thing to do quite often during the 20th century, but we all benefit from those transers today. One example was the mass expulsion of Germans from various areas after WW2. To quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_expulsions:
"The process, aiming at ethnically homogenous nation states started before the Potsdam Conference... This German deportation and migration affected up to 16.5 million Germans and was the largest of several similar post-World War 2 migrations orchestrated by victorious Western Allies and the Soviet Union, which included the resettlements of millions of Poles, Ukranians and Jews.

Also look at the creation of Pakistan-- 11 million Muslims and Hindus switched sides.

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer for a pretty complete summary of population transfers.

Robertson is much, much more influential with the current White House than a Moore would have been in a Kerry Administration.

Markus,

the Michael Moore/Pat Robertson comparisons aren't going to get you any traction because our rightwing nutjobs aren't traitorous America-hating nutjobs. It's not their nuttiness that makes people hate these guys, it's their anti-Americanism. See the diff?

michael -- "Every time that idea is floated, Israeli Arabs insist they do not want to be ruled by the Palestinian Authority. This should surprise no one."

I believe the preference of Arabs to live in Israel rather than the future Palestinian state would lessen if a) real democratic reforms were instituted in the PA, which Sharon and Bush have both indicated is a PRECONDITION for a transfer of sovereignty; b) the Palestinian state was large and contiguous enough to be economically viable.

Given this Arab preference, however, here's another win/win: allow blocs of settlers to remain in the West Bank in exchange for a comparable number of refugees, willing to also live under Israeli citizenship, to join their Israeli Arab brethren.

spaniard -- "name of an Israeli Arab settlement bloc"

My understanding of Israeli Palestinians (they apparently dislike the term "Israeli Arabs") is that they live in seperate neighborhoods and interact very little, as a rule, with the Jewish majority. I don't have exact names, but according to Freedom House: "The Israeli-Arabs live mainly in the north, in the center (triangle), in mixed towns, and in the Negev where the Bedouins live."

www.mideasti.org/articles/doc22.html

On your other point, spaniard, I agree that "anti-American" is a more serious accusation than "nutty." The problem is, it is just a vague and subjective of a judgement as nuttiness as well. Michael Moore certainly considers himself to be coming ought of a very American and very old populist tradition, and vigorously denies that anything he stands for is "anti-American." A traditional conservative, like Pat Buchanan, meanwhile, probably agrees with this point, and considers a pro-immigration, pro-free trade neo-con to be much more ANTI-AMERICAN, and a much bigger threat to our country, than he considers Michael Moore and his ilk to be.

The label to stick? You mean with people like you, of course. You will surely consider a label to be sticking if you hear it on Fox AND Rush ANd read it on the rightwing blogs in the same time period.
And it aint a isolated comment - its a philosphy deeply at odds with the liberal democratic nature of the west - its shaping philosophy ever since the Enlightenment.
Religous fundamentalism is the enemy, including the relativly milder forms we have in this country.

Posted by: porto at August 25, 2005 10:55 AM

Markus,

I get what you're saying-- swap Israeli settlement land for Israeli Arab land. Not gonna happen for the reason Michael gave.

Re "anti-American", more important than how Michael Moore or Pat Robertson perceive themselves is how regular joe blow perceives them. The Left has earned their rep over decades.

"...how regular joe blow perceives them. The Left has earned their rep over decades."

Your basic point is correct, which is why Cindy Sheehan is so potentially dangerous to Bush, and why war supporters need to mention "David Duke" and "Michael Moore" and "moveon.org" in every other breath while talking about her. If Joe Blow perceives that to be anti-war and against the neoconservative agenda is not necessarily to be anti-American or antisemitic, then the Administration and its war effort is really in trouble.

I'd go so far as to say the real threat to Bush and to the Republican control in Congress is not from the terminally muddled Democrats, but rather from a Buchananite backlash: a bunch of Joe Blows, already deeply pissed at tacit Republican support for illegal immigration, coming to the realization that the war hasn't made us safer, and deciding to stay home in the '06 elections, or to vote for Pat Hackett type challengers.

Posted by: markus rose at August 25, 2005 12:45 PM

Your basic point is correct, which is why Cindy Sheehan is so potentially dangerous to Bush, and why war supporters need to mention "David Duke" and "Michael Moore" and "moveon.org" in every other breath while talking about her.

No doubt both sides are trying to frame Mama Sheehan to their advantage. The question is therefore who's framing is more accurate. Given Mama Sheehan's propensity to repeat almost rote the same inneffective platitudes being fed to her by moveon.org, it hasn't been too difficult for the Bush supporters to portray her as the disingenous exploiter she is. And that's saying something given the MSM's obvious collaboration her efforts.

spaniard -- Sheehan appears to sound like more of a Kucinich-style peacenik than not. The problem is, her general message is RESONATING with anti-peacenik Americans -- only 34% of whom support GW's work as commander-in-chief -- based not on what she thinks or says but WHO SHE IS. Of course the President would love to cast the war debate as basically being an argument between a clean-cut "real American" and someone who has just done a bong hit. Unfortunately, this is turning into an argument between himself and "potheads" like Chuck Hagel, Rep. Walter Jones and George Will.

The problem is, her general message is RESONATING with anti-peacenik Americans

Markus,

I'll admit Sheehan has gotten more support than she deserves, but she's still in the minority by about 10 points according to polls I've seen, and she fading fast even though the mainstream media has been carrying her water for her. Slowly but surely, however, the alternative media is splashing her own words all over the blogoshere and talk radio and exposing her for the political operative she is. The other day she referred to foreign jihadis in Iraq as "freedom fighters". My god, they killed her son, but her politics trump even a mother's love. That kind of talk just doesn't sell with regular folks, so she's easy to frame as the moonbat she is.

If historic Palestine were returned to the Palestinians, the Jews could be repatriated to the Christian and Muslim countries they originally came from.

And the Palestinians originally came from the Arabian peninsula. Make them go back, too, and give Palestine back to its previous landlord - the UK.

The Jews are already where they originally came from, unless you want to go all the way back to Ur of the Chaldees - which happens to be in Iraq. The Jews are descended from (at least one) Mesopotamian who intermarried with local now-extinct tribes and who eventually built an indigenous government in Canaan. Jews have lived in modern-day Israel at least since the Persians allowed many of them to repatriate to their former kingdom.

Since the Babyloinain conquest, Palestine was always some distant nation's province. The "Palestinians" are simply descendents of one set of invaders, not the most recent ones, and were not even the most recent Muslim occupiers - that distiction goes to the Turks.

Genetic studies, I believe, show the 'palestinian arab' population to be pretty similar to the 'palestinian jew' population (i.e. the minority of jews who remained in the region under Ottoman rule). www.gnxp.com has more.

Presumably what happened is, as is usually the case, an arab ruling class moved in after the conquest, most converted to islam, a minority didn't.

In any case, this stuff has very little to do with what is to be done here and now, which should be governed by the actions and lives of currently living people, not abstract artificial constructs such as national myths and histories.

In the midst of all the bullshit about who lived where a million years ago and how this has any meaning on who should be forced out of their home at gunpoint while listening to the screams of murder, rape, and other joys of ethnic cleansing, I propose a thought experiment:

What if, improbably, it could be demonstrated that today's Palestinians, that is, the Arab population between the sea and the Jordan River, were the direct genetic descendents of the Philistines who are recorded as living there prior to the arrival of the Jews, who claim to have conquered the land?

Or, what if: what if it could be demonstrated that the Jews of Israel were not invaders, but in fact the aboriginal people of the land (archaeology tends to back this up)? And what if it could be demonstrated that, genetically, the Arabs living in the area were simply members of that same original tribe who later converted to Islam? In other words, what if there were no genetic difference at all - just the same people, whose ancestors lived there 2000 years ago as well?

Would this change anyone's calculus? Would anyone switch sides in their support?

I sincerely doubt it would, because I imagine that a lot of people who defend one side or the other do so because they identify with the plight of that people and have demonized the other side. Things like "we lived here first - 2000 years ago!" are convenient excuses. You have to build a portfolio of excuses for this sort of thing.

Honestly, people, who gives a fuck who lived where 2000 years ago, or 1000 years ago, or whenever? Jews live in Israel now. They should not be murdered to drive them from homes which they acquired peacefully. Most Jews in Israel had nothing to do with the violence of Israel's various conquests. Likewise, there are people living their now who identify themselves as Palestinians. I don't give a fuck whether their ancestors came from Arabia a hundred years ago or a million years ago. They're people, now, and they live there, now, and that's pretty much that, as far as I'm concerned.

Similarly, Europeans whiped out huge numbers of native peoples around the world - in America, in Australia, and so forth. A lot of the remaining indigenous people have gotten the shaft. This does not mean that the descendents of the Europeans should give up their homes to the descendents of the native peoples. I did nothing wrong to live in my tiny DC apartment. I think, as a society, we are living off the largess of what our ancestors stole from the ancestors of other people, and as such we share an obligation to help them move beyond the poverty they've pretty much been sentenced to for hundreds of years, but I'm a liberal, and I think we as a society have an obligation to help lots of people, so again, this has nothing to do with land.

Honestly, people, why would you care where people lived thousands of years ago? Here are some reasons not to care:

1) It was a long fucking time ago.
2) All those people are dead.
3) This means you cannot punish the bad deeds they committed.
4) People alive today shouldn't be blamed for the actions of dead people they never knew.
5) Even if the above weren't true, most of the past is unknowable.
5) a. That is, things like race and ethnicity are recent inventions. Peoples have moved, mixed, dissapeared, appeared, moved, stayed, moved, mixed, split, moved, mixed, and on and on and on so many times that it's almost impossible to know completely who your ancestors were, where they lived, and when they lived there.

It's like arguing over who "owns" England. Is it a man from York? No, says a man from London: my English ancestors were here before your Viking ancestors. No, says a man from Cornwall: my Celtic ancestors were here before your Anglo-Saxon ancestors. No, says a Welshman: my pre-Indoeuropean ancestors were here before all of you. And then they do a genetic test and find out, hey, there's a little bit of all four in all of them, plus a little Norman French, Roman, Dutch, and German ancestry in all of them. Maybe some African! A friend of mine is a "Black Norwegian" - that is, a Norwegian descended in part from African slaves brought back by Viking during the Middle Ages, and so she looks Italian, not Scandanavian.

In other words: who the fuck cares about the made-up ethnicity your ancestors created for you in the early 1800's as they pursued a political and philosophical agenda that has no basis in history or genetics?

Curious. Nobody brings up the topic of "artificial constructs" when the paleostinians are busy re-writing history-- only when the jews set the record straight. Re genetics, does that mean the palestinian Arab is genetically different from the Jordanian Arab? Let them test that.

Commenter,

I would submit to you that people's sympathy with the plight of either jews/paleostinians DOES have something to do with their story, and that if the zionists had instead landed in Madagascar instead of Israel, or that if palestinians could be shown to have recently immigrated because of the zionist economic boom, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. People's stories do count. We aren't just economic meat puppets as according to Marx, and now modern Liberals.

Hey, if you want to think of yourself as a meat puppet, that's fine, but that's your business. Being a liberal means that I'm ok with your bizarre fetishes so long as they don't involve me and you don't interfere with my bizarre fetishes, none of which, fortunately, involve meat puppets.

But seriously folks, what I mean by that was this: frequently, we take a position for emotional reasons, and then try to build logical arguments and excuses around that to justify to and convince others.

People like the space program because, hey, space! It's cool. Also, we get some electronic gadgets or some new screws or something like that. Support billions for space because we get screws!

That sort of thing. I feel like the various defenses of the Israelis or the Palestinians are the sort of things that people collect, rather than building a coherent, logical argument for either.

I mean, seriously, you support a group's political claim to a particular territory because someone of that group has ancestors who lived in the territory 2000 years ago? Because there are a whole lot of people who maybe had some ancestors, or believe they are related somehow to other people who had ancestors, who lived somewhere else, and a lot of them had to leave their homes because of violence.

Zum Beispiel: There's a valley in eastern France that marks the furtherst western advance of Attilla the Hun's army. In the valley, there are still some people with characteristically Asian eyes, because they are descended from the east Asian Huns. Do they get kicked out by some people who claim they're descendents of the Visigoths who lived there before the Huns came? Or Romans, before the Visigoths? Or Gauls, before the Romans? Or...?

Spaniard, I'm not a Marxist. I'm not quite sure where you got that notion.

I was simply describing my impression of how I've observed most people argue about most issues. There's always that grab-bag sense of trying to acquire as many arguments in defense or attack of something, regardless of how relevant they are to the original point or important they are to the arguer.

Or: "Israelis have a claim to live peacefully in their homes because they have done nothing to deserve being forced out by violence. Oh, and their ancestors lived here a long time ago."

I never argued that emotional reasons were invalid reasons. I simply don't see the whole "X lived here 2000 years ago, so that gives Y a reason to live there now" as being all that valid. Furthermore, I tend to see that as a kind of grab-bag argument: how many excuses can we find to justify something, regardless of how relevant or important any of them are?

I bet you guys can think of a few that I forgot, but these are some I remember:

1) WMD!
2) Saddam <3 terrorists.
3) Saddam had invaded his neighbors before.
4) Saddam was a tyrant.
5) Saddam gassed the Kurds.
6) Saddam tried to kill Papa Bush.
7) Freedom will make terrorists sad and there won't be any more terrorists. Or, democracy will drain the swamp that breeds terrorists.
8) Fightin' them over there, so we won't have to fight them over here*!
9) Saddam totally had those missiles that were a little in violation of UN Resolutions (I realize that, yes, this was bad and that this was legally, under international law, a casus belli - but who would have ever gone to war just over this?).
10) We can move our troops out of Saudi Arabia.
11) Iraq can pay for its own reconstruction.
12) We will be greeted with flowers and candy kisses.

And on and on and on. Now, whether you support(ed) or oppose(d) the war, I don't care. One must recognize that there are pretty good reasons to go to war (say, if Saddam actually had WMD and wanted to get them to the terrorists with whom he had an actual relationship) versus really bad ones (Iraq is way easier to beat than North Korea, so we'll get Iraq instead, and he tried to kill Papa Bush! and there were those missiles).

But it didn't matter how good or how bad the reasons were: what mattered was the size of the pile of justifications. Which is easier: convincing the American public of the merits of invading Iraq in order to bring democracy so as to spread American ideals through the region in order to weaken the popularity of and support for terrorism, OR saying: we need to invade because of A and B and C and D, and Saddam is bad because of E and F a G and H?

I have a feeling that the latter is much easier, since that's what people (like the Bush administration) do. Maybe they feel it and maybe it's a cynical ploy, but I think it has a lot to do with the sense that something is so overwhelmingly important, because of all these reasons! Maybe the reasons aren't that important individually, but can't you see the weight, the sheer mass, of all these reasons for doing or not doing something?

Which gets us back to the 2000 years question: there are good reasons and bad to support Israel. I think that the 2000 years one is pretty bad, but it adds to the pile, you know? It adds to the enormous weight of the pile of arguments, and it makes it overwhelmingly clear which side is right, because, I mean, didn't you hear all my reasons? Do you want me to list them all again?

So, I wonder: does everyone who associates with someone who might have had some ancestors who lived somewhere else in the past have a moral right to the place where those people might have lived?

"here" does not include London, Madrid, Beslan, or any other place in the world, anywhere.

That's funny, Spaniard. I never realized that I thought like a Marxist. Thanks for letting me know what's going on in my own head.

I wonder who else out there thinks things without know that. I mean, you might, for example, think like a monkey in the last stages of syphlitic madness, and not even know it! Huh. What a strange world we live in.

Pat Robertson is every bit as anti-American as Michael Moore is. And, no, his anti-American comments are hardly isolated and taken out of context. We're not all going to agree on just what is American and what is not. The Founding Fathers didn't even agree on that one.

All I'm saying is, please respect the fact a vast majority of Americans believe that pluralism and religious freedom are American values. Pat Robertson does not. Any idiot who's listened to the guy for more than 5 seconds can figure that out. As such, we call him anti-American.

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